Veins

I cannot donate my blood to someone who is dying

On their last breath, whose existence would be saved

Because of a disease the government did nothing to protect us from

People burying their best friends expected to live a normal life and if you don’t like it well

“You shouldn’t have chosen to live that lifestyle”

I did not check a box at birth, fill out a form consider my options

I was born with a preference that I cannot change

Does that preference make me that different?

Is the blood running through my veins fundamentally broken compared to my peers?

If I became the all-american heterosexual ideal, would my blood flow the right way?

Or would a pathetic replica stand before you?

I am not ungrateful for what has been done

For what has allowed me to be angry about blood

The people who sweat and bled resistance, whose heads were cracked open on the sidewalk for 

being themselves

Whose actions turned our ultimate disease into our superpower

Their contributions and the way they fought so that I can get a legal unhappy marriage just like 

any other man on the earth are not lost on me

And the shame of not doing enough rings in my ears and comes out through my mouth when I 

think of the unofficial referees

Those who will blow their whistle and proudly inform us that “the fight is over! You won!” and 

patting themselves on the back for fixing the problem

High on their own self-importance, ignoring the angry fans in the stand who we promise are not 

prejudiced, they just disagree with the idea!

They disagree with my equal footing; I should be put 40 feet behind the starting line

Just to make it fair for everyone who was born normal

And I would never even think to go around children and expose them to my deviancy

The sexually explicit way I sit on my couch and play Pokemon

They shouldn’t get any ideas from me when they have loving normal parents

Who blow up balloons to figure out which rules of gender  to suffocate them under

The little studs and babes, trained to peruse the playground hoping to find a kindergarten 

boyfriend or girlfriend for mommy and daddy like a good child

Should I inform my kindergarten girlfriend that it’s nothing personal, but I prefer penis?

Or is the human not important, just following the presented guidelines?

If we have an agenda, theirs is more thorough

Well thought out and applied with all the speedbumps accounted for

Two girls together is cute and unthreatening, but making them prom king and queen doesn’t send 

the right message

Fags are weird and deserve to be ostracized, but getting pleasure from lesbians every night isn’t 

unnatural: they’re hot!

And it’s so cute to have a gay best friend but that weird girl is definitely into you and definitely 

an obsessed predator

What parts of me are right today? What should I censor to the world so they don’t see that 

disgusting side of me?

A side that fought tooth and nail to exist in the imperfect state that we’ve won

A side filled with people who would be nothing but free, who knew they deserved better, and 

then died in 1985

I am not proud, but I am pissed off

And while that pride may take years of self-reckoning to emerge, the anger will never die

It funnels into passion when I see the progress made

When I can watch a gay man run for president on TV, and not vote for him for being a moderate 

douchebag

Or read about how RuPaul fracks for oil

Part of me grins for them knowing that they’ve somehow managed to game the system in their 

favor

And part is happy because I know their time is coming to an end and the real revolutionaries are 

coming

I will not settle; the blood in my veins will churn and churn and revolve until it gushes out into 

someone else

Replenishing their vitals and organs and staining the white of the hospital beds and the 

holier-than-thou forever.

About the Author

Tobi Tella is a junior English major with minors in Secondary Education and Theater Arts. He is proud to be a peer mentor in the university's Social Action and Justice in Education Fellowship. He has always appreciated literature's unique ability to evoke different worlds and speak truth to power.